President Trump?

“This is crazy on a whole new level,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College and former House GOP staffer. “It’s a measure of how bad it is that even the head of the Republican National Committee has criticized it, and Reince Priebus has been loath to say anything bad” about any of the candidates.

Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan slammed Trump’s idea Tuesday, saying that blocking members of a religious group from entering the country “is not what this party stands for. And more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”

Even foreign leaders have criticized the plan, with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls saying in a tweet that Trump “stokes hatred” with his remarks.

But Trump has been unrepentant, saying in a phone interview on a CNN morning news show that it didn’t matter what others, including other Republicans, have to say.

“I don’t care about them,” he said. “I’m doing what’s right.”

For Trump, outrageous has been his signature ever since he jumped into the presidential race in June with a call for what could be a nearly 2,000-mile-long fence along the country’s southern border and a promise to deport all 11 million undocumented residents in the United States.

Those statements have struck a tone with Republican voters, with polls showing Trump leading not only nationally but also in Iowa and New Hampshire, which kick off the election season in February.

‘A gift for Republicans’

Hot-button statements haven’t hurt Trump in the past, and that’s not likely to happen now — at least in the short term, said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and former aide to GOP Gov. Pete Wilson.

The proposed ban on Muslims “probably won’t have an effect on Trump,” he said. “The people who support Trump probably want to hear more of it.”

But Trump’s statement, and the international outrage it has stirred, does give his primary opponents an opening.

“This is a gift for Republicans” both inside and outside the presidential campaign, Whalen said. “It’s so outrageous that every Republican feels free to move away from Trump without worrying about potential damage.”

With a new USA Today poll showing Trump with 27 percent support nationally, it’s mainly the also-rans taking advantage of free shots at the front-runner.

Photo: Saul Loeb, AFP / Getty Images

Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump on December 7 called for a "total and complete" block on Muslims entering the United States.

Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump on December 7 called...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for example, was quick to call Trump “unhinged” and say his policy proposals aren’t serious. Bush is at 4 percent in the new poll.

Trump “has gone from making absurd comments to being downright dangerous with his bombastic rhetoric,” tweeted South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has 0 percent support in the poll. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, at 2 percent, said the proposed ban is an example of “the outrageous divisiveness that characterizes his every breath.”

It’s different for those closer to Trump in the polls. While Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (16 percent) said that Trump’s “habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the current runner-up at 17 percent, said that while he disagrees with Trump on the ban, he isn’t interested in criticizing him.

“I commend Donald Trump for standing up and focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders,” he said at a news conference.

For better or worse, Trump has again shown that he’s a different type of candidate, one not willing to play by the long-established rules of political campaigning.

Solidifying his base

While much of what Trump has said and done during his first run for office isn’t likely to go over well with Democrats and independents in the 2016 general election, that’s only a concern to the Republican who wins the nomination. For Trump, it’s first things first — and then worry about Democratic voters after next summer’s convention in Cleveland.

When President Obama spoke on national TV Sunday night about the country’s response to last week’s massacre in San Bernardino, a likely act of terror that left 14 people dead, he gave a reasoned, nuanced talk to a country that wasn’t looking for nuance.

While Republicans were quick to challenge Obama’s view of the country’s response in the war against terrorism, it was Trump who pushed the hardest, putting out his plan for the ban, which dominated the news and forced his primary opponents to deal with it.

“It’s totally reasonable to take firm disagreement with the president,” Pitney of Claremont McKenna College said. “But Trump operates on a different planet.”

And when White House spokesman Josh Earnest called Tuesday for all Republican presidential candidates to disavow Trump’s plan, it put them in the position of seeming to bow to Obama’s wishes — not the best spot when GOP voters are calling for an ever-bolder response to terrorism here and abroad.

The next Republican debate, scheduled for Tuesday, will give the candidates a chance to take on Trump and his proposed ban directly, Pitney said.